kolinstrument to calculate the area of a closed figure by tracing over it with a mechanical linkage.

A slide rule

The slide rule was invented around 1620–1630, shortly after the publication of the concept of
the logarithm. It is a hand-operated analog computer for doing multiplication and division. As
slide rule development progressed, added scales provided reciprocals, squares and square
roots, cubes and cube roots, as well as transcendental functions such as logarithms and
exponentials, circular and hyperbolictrigonometry and other functions. Slide rules with special
scales are still used for quick performance of routine calculations, such as the E6Bcircular slide
rule used for time and distance calculations on light aircraft.
In the 1770s, Pierre Jaquet-Droz, a Swiss watchmaker, built a mechanical doll (automata) that
could write holding a quill pen. By switching the number and order of its internal wheels different
letters, and hence different messages, could be produced. In effect, it could be mechanically
"programmed" to read instructions. Along with two other complex machines, the doll is at the
Musée d'Art et d'Histoire of Neuchâtel, Switzerland, and still operates.[13]
The tide-predicting machine invented by Sir William Thomson in 1872 was of great utility to
navigation in shallow waters. It used a system of pulleys and wires to automatically calculate
predicted tide levels for a set period at a particular location.
The differential analyser, a mechanical analog computer designed to solve differential
equations by integration, used wheel-and-disc mechanisms to perform the integration. In
1876, Lord Kelvin had already discussed the possible construction of such calculators, but he
had been stymied by the limited output torque of the ball-and-disk integrators.[14] In a differential
analyzer, the output of one integrator drove the input of the next integrator, or a graphing output.
The torque amplifier was the advance that allowed these machines to work. Starting in the
1920s, Vannevar Bush and others developed mechanical differential analyzers.